


Till we come face to face

by obstinatrix



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale In A Fistfight (By Popular Demand), Ficlets, Gratuitous Dorothy L Sayers References, M/M, Period Piece
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 18:35:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20625659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinatrix/pseuds/obstinatrix
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley, at various points in a long history.ORFiclets I originally posted on Tumblr in response to various prompts, collected here. Mostly rather slapdash, but for the record.





	1. "please for the love of god aziraphale in a fistfight"

**Author's Note:**

> Send me a prompt on tumblr, if you fancy it: @scurator

Crowley had heard, of course, about the enforcers. It had started up in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when rents had begun to creep up in Soho and the nature of the place became such that an antiquarian bookstore stuck out a bit like a sore thumb. Shady types skulking about in trenchcoats like old Hollywood villains, muttering things about cash in hand or a nice long dip in the Serpentine; your choice, Mr Fell.

Aziraphale brushed it off every time – made it sound as if it were barely an issue. He brought it up occasionally over wine, in between complaints about the customers Aziraphale honestly didn’t want to complain about, _but_. Crowley hadn’t thought much of it, assuming he used power of angelic suggestion to disband the would-be encroachers on his territory. He certainly had the power for it. He could have wiped their minds of all thought of the shop, if he had the inclination.

He definitely hadn’t considered the possibility that Aziraphale, always a great proponent of fairness, had been dealing with any of these people in a rather more human fashion. Not until the day he pulled up in the Bentley, set upon whisking Aziraphale off for lunch, and came upon The Scene.

It might be fairer to say that The Scene came upon him. He had barely swaggered out of the car when two young boys, running at full pelt, knocked his shoulder in passing, sparking a yell and a curse from Crowley in return. Then he realised what they were running towards, and his voice caught in his throat.

Aziraphale was at the centre of it – that, at least, he was sure of. The rest was, frankly, a bit of a blur. There were men outside the bookshop passing banknotes back and forth, as if settling bets. There were various women of ill repute clutching at each other’s sleeves and giggling. And, in the little island of space outside the door of the bookshop, there was a young man lying on the ground with his hand pressed to his nose, from which a thin trickle of blood emerged.

Above him stood Aziraphale, wearing an expression Crowley couldn’t ever remembering having seen on his face.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, a little dazedly, “What’s all this? I was gonna take you to the Ritz.”

Aziraphale blinked, eyes focusing on him, his face softening. “Crowley!” he said, and then immediately looked apologetic. “I’m afraid I’m not properly dressed, dear boy.”

That was true enough. Crowley thought he hadn’t ever seen Aziraphale quite so improperly dressed since Rome, and then at least he’d fitted in. Aziraphale’s jacket, waistcoat and bowtie, Crowley now saw, had been neatly hung on the handle of the shop’s closed door. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, baring pale forearms, the fair hair on which glinted in the afternoon sun. His shirt buttons – still more scandalous – were open almost to the middle of his chest, revealing a great deal of undershirt and a suggestion of blond chest hair.

Crowley instantly felt faint, and couldn’t quite understand how anyone else was standing upright.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley croaked weakly, “are you fighting?”

“Not any more, I think,” Aziraphale said primly, looking down at the unfortunate fellow at his feet. “You’ve had enough, haven’t you, darling?”

The prone figure groaned, rolled onto its front, and uttered something which might have begun as a homophobic slur, but which cut off abruptly in the middle when Aziraphale’s boot came down – not hard, but firmly – on the man’s fingers.

“Haven’t you?” Aziraphale prompted, darkly.

The crowd murmured and shifted. Crowley’s trousers had suddenly become even more uncomfortably tight than usual.

“Fine,” the man spat, blood and – was that a tooth? – coming out alongside the word. “You’ve not heard the last of us, though, Fell.”

Aziraphale surveyed him dispassionately as, grubby and dishevelled, he picked himself up off the ground. He looked, Crowley realised with a jolt, like what he was: something terrifying. But there’d been nothing angelic about this – nothing of Heaven’s fearsome power and glory. This was just Aziraphale, in shirtsleeves and coolly weaponised anger, and Crowley found he couldn’t quite cope with it.

“Good,” Aziraphale said, and began rolling down the left cuff of his shirt. His cufflinks appeared as if by sleight of hand, and the crowd began to dissipate. Aziraphale scattered smiles like largesse as people filed away, offering congratulations on his victory.

Crowley was still blinking at him when he realised the rest of Aziraphale’s customary outfit had reasserted itself, presumably with the help of a little frivolous miracle. Aziraphale moved towards him, holding out his arm for Crowley to take. He had smoothed his hair down, but a suggestion of sweat still remained in the hollow of his throat. Crowley had to fight down the urge to lean in and lick it off.

“My dear?” Aziraphale said, mildly, as if Crowley had not just borne witness to him pounding some poor idiot’s goon into the pavement. “You said something about the Ritz? I think I’m ready now.”

“That makes one of us,” Crowley said faintly. 


	2. Stars

Port Meadow, a September Sunday night. The air is cool and clear and, far above, the sky is dense with stars. They are barely out of the city, here — at this late hour, the bells of all the dreaming spires come drifting on the wind — but the darkness is almost as complete as it was when, some time in the thirteenth century, they first lay here in the grass, sharing a bottle of mead and an idle argument. Oxford, Aziraphale thinks, has changed as little as they have; and as completely. Tiny shifts that make all the difference to the whole.

Crowley is watching the stars, his glasses discarded in the grass and his red hair loose about his shoulders. Aziraphale, his cheek propped on his arm, is watching Crowley.

“Orion’s Belt,” Crowley says, pointing a long arm. As if Aziraphale couldn’t pick out the constellation for himself. As if Aziraphale didn’t know that Crowley, once a time, had formed it, shaping atoms with his fingers and setting the hearts of stars aflame.

To oblige him, Aziraphale looks anyway. Little white pinpricks glow back at him, far above. Crowley had wanted to take them up there, into the black unknown. To escape. It would have been liveable, Aziraphale thinks, because it would have been them. But stars are meant to be looked at from a distance, with the appropriate amount of awe. Aziraphale belongs down here on Earth, where the light of even the closest star takes thousands of years to reach.

Even now — after months of this, of the days of the rest of their lives — it is shocking to him sometimes that Crowley, his own red star around whom he has orbited for millennia, should be his to touch. To grasp in the palms of his hands, without fear of burning. He’s always glowed so brightly, Aziraphale had forgotten that the red stars are the cool ones, all the wildness burned out of them. Steady, long-lasting.

“One of yours?” Aziraphale says, and Crowley turns towards him, smiles.

“One of mine.”

He lets his hand fall, half-curled, into the grass above his head. Aziraphale takes it idly, kisses its palm and feels Crowley shiver. Kisses the heel of the hand, and then the fine soft skin of the wrist where the veins pulse blue just below the surface.

Beside him, Crowley stirs, and his eyes are yellow, star-bright. “My dear,” Aziraphale says. “You know I’ve always loved your work.”

Crowley shifts, leans over, and the pair of them meet in the middle. Crowley’s lips part softly under Aziraphale’s, and Aziraphale nuzzles at the curve of his underlip, sucks at it until Crowley shivers. Traces the wet inside of Crowley’s mouth with the tip of his tongue until Crowley groans and fists both hands in Aziraphale’s jacket, pulling him in.

“In public, angel,” Crowley warns, as if it weren’t pitch black and midnight, not even term time, nothing but the horses at pasture to keep them company.

Aziraphale smiles against his mouth and kisses him again, all tongue, and shivers when Crowley capitulates, his body going pliant in the grass.

You can’t catch a falling star, they say, not really; but Aziraphale thinks he’s come close enough.


	3. One missed call

When Crowley’s phone rang, it played, like any self-respecting infernal creation, the standard tinny Apple tune beloved of deaf old men and Facebook mums. Partly for this reason, Aziraphale never rang Crowley unless he could help it. Partly – though not entirely – for this reason, Aziraphale grunted unhappily when the thing set up its caterwauling, pressing his heel between Crowley’s shoulderblades just hard enough to hurt.

“Oh, for – shut that blessed thing up, darling.”

Crowley lifted his head and surveyed him with lazy snake eyes, the suggestion of a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Could be important.”

Another imperious press of the heel. “Who on earth – or outside of it, for that matter – could be calling you with anything more important than, than what do you call it? _Ham_, or–”

“You mean spam,” Crowley corrected gently, definitely grinning now. He kissed the soft inside of Aziraphale’s thigh. “What if it’s somebody else important, hmm? You’re not the only person on the planet, you know.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said dangerously, “I had_ better_ be the only person on the planet, or I shall get up and dress posthaste and if you ever want to do this again, you’ll have to beg for it, and even then, no promises. So –”

He made to move, and was gratified by the flash of genuine alarm in Crowley’s eyes in the split second before he reached for, and swiftly obliterated, the offending phone.

“There,” Crowley said, “no interruptions. If it was important, they’ll ring back.”

“That’s my good boy,” Aziraphale said, carding his fingers through the scarlet swathe of damp hair that had fallen over Crowley’s forehead. He canted his hips and Crowley, knowing his place, lowered his head again; caught Aziraphale’s gaze for a moment before his tongue resumed its work. He crooked his fingers, rubbing, and Aziraphale closed his eyes, tugging at his fistful of hair.

When Crowley retrieved the phone, several hours later, from the ether, it showed one missed call, and no message.

It obviously hadn’t been important.


	4. tears; broken glass

“Get in the car, angel,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale’s grip on the briefcase tightened reflexively, but somehow his feet seemed fused in place. His throat worked, a preparation for speech, but – what to say?

_I’m sorry I’ve been so terribly stupid, darling. I didn’t understand that you loved me._

It might all have been straightforward were it not for the rest of it:

_I love you. I know it now, but I don’t think it can change anything._

Crowley turned his head, taking in Aziraphale’s anxious stance from his uncovered head down to the debris at his feet. The church windows had shattered in the bomb-blast, exploded into a thousand tiny fragments which glittered now amongst the ruins.

“Mind the glass, then.” Crowley held out his hand, as if he thought Aziraphale was being painfully hesitant and was in need of coddling. As if he needed Crowley to guide him to safety.

Aziraphale breathed out hard, blinking. There was an odd sensation behind his eyes, a sort of pressure whose source he couldn’t pinpoint. His lashes felt abruptly wet.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said again, soothingly. Gently. Not the way a demon ought to talk at all.

Aziraphale often thought everything would have been much easier if Crowley had been the way a demon ought to be.

“Come on.” Crowley’s voice was gentle, and his hand found its way into Aziraphale’s, kind and firm. “This way. I’ve got you. I’ll take you home.”

“Please,” Aziraphale said faintly, almost without thinking. His voice, too, felt wet. He couldn’t remember ever having felt this way before, not quite. His chest ached. “Take me home.”

“Any time, angel,” Crowley said.

He meant it. That was the worst of it. The pressure inside Aziraphale swelled, until it felt almost unbearable. How could he live like this? he wondered. How could anyone? It couldn’t last.

He got into the car. Crowley drove him home, quietly and without remark.

Aziraphale’s chest ached, sad and low, for approximately another seventy-eight years, give or take. It seemed an apt enough punishment.


	5. Oxford, 1935

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actual prompt for this one was, and I quote, "i am above completing the ask meme in a normal way, just write me something I'll like" - wishwellingtons

_Oxford, 1935_

Crowley was dawdling outside the Bodleian, considering the merits of snaking through the reading room with his blouse unbuttoned – student towns were always good for a mild lust epidemic – when he spotted Aziraphale, very sedately pedalling an upright bicycle down the Broad. He would have known it was Aziraphale at once from the way he carried himself, with the excellent but cautious form of one who learned his cycling on a penny farthing, even had it not been for the shoes.

Crowley had always loathed those thrice-damned shoes on him. They belonged in the 1920s and made Aziraphale’s dainty ankles look thick, for which crime alone Crowley would have condemned them to the seventh circle, but Aziraphale liked them, and that, as ever, rendered Crowley powerless.

Crowley pushed himself up from his slouch against the corner of the building and held out a hand, as if hailing a taxicab. The look on Aziraphale’s face metamorphosed instantly from studious concentration to unshielded delight, which was cheering, and the bicycle came (wobblingly) to a halt.

Aziraphale dismounted carefully, smoothing his skirt down. He looked, Crowley thought, every inch the bluestocking, from blouse to blazer to little spectacles. There was a little string bag with books in it dangling from the handlebars of the bicycle, which for some reason made Crowley’s chest go all squishy and soft. Bloody angel.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said. He was slightly out of breath, his cheeks pink. Strands of blond hair were coming untucked from the neat little governess bun he’d shoved it into – as if anything could successfully contain Aziraphale’s curls. “What are you doing here?”

Crowley cocked his head and smiled. “Here for the Gaudy up at Shrewsbury, angel. Ripe for a spot of trouble, that lot.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale’s smile faltered slightly. “Yes, there’s – me too. I’m supposed to keep a lid on the upset.”

“Well,” Crowley says, “I’ve been giving it the old college try – poison pen letters and everything; not my own hand, but suggestions here and there, you know. But I’m sure you can walk it back.”

“I’ve got a woman in situ,” Aziraphale confessed, though he still looked a little worried. Then his brow, quite suddenly, cleared, as if something had occurred to him. “Will you be staying, then?”

Crowley bit his lip on a grin. “Couple of nights. We could make a thing of it, if you like? You’ve come as the swot, I’m the hockey blue who led you astray when we were undergrads. We were great friends, keen to make up for lost time. Gives us an excuse to keep to ourselves. What do you think?”

There were spots of colour high on Aziraphale’s cheeks. Crowley took a moment to be glad he’d spent actual time applying his lipstick instead of just miracling it on.

“Well,” Aziraphale said eventually, his eyes flickering to Crowley’s face and then away again, “I suppose it would make sense, my dear.”

“Perfect sense,” said Crowley, and took hold of the handlebars of Aziraphale’s bike. “Shall we lock this up? Get some lunch?”

“If you insist,” Aziraphale said, after only a fraction of a second’s token hesitation.

Crowley very much insisted.


	6. "No talking, please."

They didn’t talk about it.

It was, Aziraphale supposed, part of the Arrangement, although only by inference. Crowley would catch his eye, and Aziraphale would feel that sweet drop in his abdomen which must have been some part of him Falling. 

Crowley’s eyebrow would lift, inviting – or imploring. Aziraphale could never be sure. It wasn’t up for discussion; and anyway, it hardly seemed to matter. His answer was always _yes, _to this at least. Sometimes it felt like the only thing he could reasonably give_._

Crowley had long fingers, clever and quick with the clasps of brooches, the laces of hose; the buttons of the neat tweed trousers Aziraphale favoured. They’d lingered in dark corners the whole world over like this: Aziraphale’s fingers trembling on Crowley’s shoulders and Crowley’s breath hot on his neck, Crowley’s fist around his prick. 

Crowley was good at it, attentive, almost kind. He knew how Aziraphale liked to be touched, as he ought – in the beginning, they’d learned together. He knew it made Aziraphale shiver and thrill, slicking under Crowley’s touch, when Crowley named the act for him against his throat: _you get so fucking wet like this, angel _and _come on, fuck my fist, that’s it. _

Sometimes, at the end, he’d say _I’ve got you. _Something about it made Aziraphale feel like kindling in the path of a brushfire. 

He tried not to think about it. 

Afterwards, Crowley would smile at him, the flash of his teeth like a blade drawn in the dark. Crowley could have put that blade to his throat and Aziraphale, he knew, would not protest, but that wasn’t the way they did things. It wasn’t the arrangement. 

Sometimes, Crowley would miracle them clean again, but Aziraphale preferred the times when they were languorous and lazy and Crowley licked Aziraphale from his fingers, one after the other. It seemed less disingenuous, swallowing the evidence. Even a miracle, really, could not remove the stain from them. 

The first time he touched Crowley back was – oh, Wessex, damp and drear. He’d wanted to. It always took him some time to work up to things.

It was a favour, he told himself sternly, at first, until Crowley made a soft, secret sound and arched against him and Aziraphale knew this was selfishness. 

“Please,” Crowley said, always: “please, angel,” and Aziraphale couldn’t bear the sound of it; couldn’t live without it. Crowley was fiercely hot and smooth in his hand, straining for him. Aziraphale craved the need in him, wondered at it; ached to work him over like this until he splintered, showing his soft insides. 

He was lying to himself, he knew. Sometimes, when they were like this, he thought he heard the unspoken words caught at the back of Crowley’s throat: _Aziraphale, I – _But it was a fantasy, an impossibility. Demons couldn’t.

It was something wrong in Aziraphale that he let Crowley set hands upon him and that, moreover, he persisted in touching back, putting his fingers into the fire as if it held no danger for him. They ought to stop doing it. He ought to tell Crowley, but they didn’t talk about it. That was, after all, the arrangement. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've entered the porn phase of my obsession with these two. Tell me what you want them to do, if you fancy it: @scurator on tumblr.


End file.
